A Quotation From
Chairman Mao Tse-tung

The current great proletarian cultural revolution is
absolutely necessary and most timely for consolidating the dictatorship of the
proletariat, preventing capitalist restoration and building socialism.

Our great leader Chairman Mao at the Enlarged 12th Plenary Session
of the Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

Communique of the Enlarged 12th Plenary Session of the
Eighth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

(Adopted on October 31, 1968)

[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 11, #44, Nov. 1,
1968, Supplement, pp. v-viii. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]

The Enlarged 12th Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee
of the Communist Party of China opened in Peking on October 13, 1968 and was successfully concluded
on October 31.

Comrade Mao Tse-tung, Chairman of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of China, presided over this session which is of great historic significance and
made a most important speech on the great proletarian cultural revolution movement since the 11th
Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee of the Party in August 1966.

Vice-Chairman Lin Piao, Chairman Mao Tse-tung’s close
comrade-in-arms, attended the session and made an important speech.

Attending the session were Members and Alternate Members of the
Central Committee.

All members of the Cultural Revolution Group Under the Central
Committee attended the session.

Principal responsible comrades of the revolutionary committees
of the provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions attended the session.

Principal responsible comrades of the Chinese People’s Liberation
Army attended the session.

The Enlarged 12th Plenary Session of the Eighth Central Committee
unanimously holds that the great proletarian cultural revolution, personally initiated and led by
our great leader Comrade Mao Tse-tung, is a great political revolution made by the proletariat
against the bourgeoisie and all other exploiting classes under the conditions of the dictatorship
of the proletariat in our country.

The Plenary Session holds that in his great revolutionary
document “Bombard the Headquarters” issued at the 11th Plenary Session of the Eighth Central
Committee, Chairman Mao charted the course of victory for the current great proletarian cultural
revolution.

The Plenary Session holds that the “Decision Concerning the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution” drawn up under Chairman Mao’s personal guidance at the 11th Plenary
Session of the Eighth Central Committee and the Communique of the 11th Plenary Session are
correct.

The Plenary Session holds that Chairman Mao’s proletarian
revolutionary line, his great strategic plan for the great proletarian cultural revolution and the
series of important instructions he has given at various stages of this revolution, and Vice-Chairman
Lin’s many speeches are all correct. The Cultural Revolution Group Under the Central Committee has
played an important role in the struggle to carry out Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary
line.

Practice in the great proletarian cultural revolution proves that,
as Comrade Mao Tse-tung has said, the current great proletarian cultural revolution is absolutely
necessary and most timely for consolidating the dictatorship of the proletariat, preventing
capitalist restoration and building socialism. Under the guidance of Chairman Mao’s proletarian
revolutionary line and the leadership of the proletarian headquarters with Chairman Mao as its leader
and Vice-Chairman Lin as its deputy leader, and in the process of extremely complicated and acute
class struggle over the past two years, hundreds of millions of people have been mobilized on a scale
unprecedented in breadth and depth and, with the support of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and
through repeated trials of class strength, have finally smashed the bourgeois headquarters
represented by Liu Shao-chi together with its agents in various places, which vainly attempted to
usurp the leadership of the Party, the Government and the army, and have seized back that portion of
power they usurped. Revolutionary committees have been set up in 29 provinces, municipalities and
autonomous regions, that is, throughout the country with the exception of Taiwan Province. Today
this momentous proletarian cultural revolution has won great and decisive victory.

The Plenary Session holds that the victories of the great
proletarian cultural revolution are further proof that the Communist Party of China with Comrade Mao
Tse-tung as its leader is a great, glorious and correct Party. The Plenary Session holds that through
the storms of the great proletarian cultural revolution, ample ideological, political and
organizational conditions have been prepared for convening the Ninth National Congress of the Party.
The Plenary Session decided that the Ninth National Congress of the Communist Party of China will be
held at an appropriate time.

The Plenary Session ratified the “Report on the Examination of the
Crimes of the Renegade, Traitor and Scab Liu Shao-chi” submitted by the special group under the
Central Committee of the Party for the examination of his case. The report confirms with full
supporting evidence that Liu Shao-chi, the No. 1 Party person in authority taking the capitalist
road, is a renegade, traitor and scab hiding in the Party and is a lackey of imperialism, modern
revisionism and the Kuomintang reactionaries who has committed innumerable crimes. The Plenary
Session holds that the exposure of the counter-revolutionary features of Liu Shao-chi by the Party
and the revolutionary masses in the great proletarian cultural revolution is a tremendous victory
for Mao Tse-tung’s thought and for the great proletarian cultural revolution. The Plenary Session
expressed its deepest revolutionary indignation at Liu Shao-chi’s counter-revolutionary crimes and
unanimously adopted a resolution to expel Liu Shao-chi from the Party once and for all, to dismiss
him from all posts both inside and outside the Party and to continue to settle accounts with him
and his accomplices for their crimes in betraying the Party and the country. The Plenary Session
calls on all comrades in the Party and the people of the whole country to carry on deep-going
revolutionary mass criticism and repudiation and eradicate the counterrevolutionary revisionist
ideas of Liu Shao-chi and the handful of other top Party persons in authority taking the capitalist
road.

The Plenary Session points out that a fierce struggle between the
two classes, the two roads and the two lines runs through the history of the great proletarian
cultural revolution over the past two years and more. The struggle centres on the question of
political power, the question of the fight for leadership between the proletariat and the
bourgeoisie, and the question of whether the leadership of the Party and state is to be in the
hands of Marxists or of revisionists. Unreconciled to their doom, the exploiting classes and
their agents used all kinds of political and economic means both from the Right and from the
extreme “Left” — that is, “Left” in form but Right in essence — in a vain attempt to confuse class
alignments, sabotage the great proletarian cultural revolution and stage a counter-seizure of power
from the proletariat. But all their plots have been exposed one after another by the masses of
revolutionary people who have grasped Mao Tse-tung’s thought. The Plenary Session holds that it is
essential to continue sharpening vigilance against sabotage by the exploiting classes and their
agents.

The Plenary Session seriously criticized and repudiated the
“adverse February current” of 1967 directed against the decision of the 11th Plenary Session of
the Eighth Central Committee, against the great proletarian cultural revolution and against the
proletarian headquarters with Chairman Mao as its leader and Vice-Chairman Lin as its deputy
leader. The Plenary Session holds that the shattering of the “adverse February current” and of
the sinister trend last spring to reverse the correct verdict on the “adverse February current”
was an important victory for Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line in smashing the
bourgeois reactionary line.

The Plenary Session holds that the tremendous victories of the
great proletarian cultural revolution have further demonstrated the profound and far-reaching
significance of Comrade Mao Tse-tung’s theory on continuing the revolution under the dictatorship
of the proletariat. Mao Tse-tung’s thought is Marxism-Leninism of the era in which imperialism
is heading for total collapse and socialism is advancing to worldwide victory; it is the thought
guiding all the work of the Party, the army and the country. Once Mao Tse-tung’s thought is
grasped by the masses of the people, it generates an immense material force. In the great
proletarian cultural revolution, Mao Tse-tung’s thought has been rapidly disseminated among
hundreds of millions of people, making its way deep into their hearts; in their struggles, the
masses of workers, peasants and soldiers have eagerly and creatively studied and applied Mao
Tse-tung’s thought. This is the basic guarantee for consolidating the dictatorship of the
proletariat and preventing our country from ever changing its political colour. The whole Party,
the whole army and the revolutionary committees at all levels must continue to hold aloft the
great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought, unite closely around the proletarian headquarters
with Chairman Mao as its leader and Vice-Chairman Lin as its deputy leader, closely follow
Chairman Mao’s great strategic plan, conscientiously carry out each and every one of Chairman
Mao’s latest instructions, carry forward the mass movement for the study of Chairman Mao’s works,
run Mao Tse-tung’s thought study classes well, use Mao Tse-tung’s thought to unify their
thinking and co-ordinate their steps and actions and criticize and repudiate the reactionary
bourgeois theory of “many centres,” so as to go on winning fresh victories in all fields of our
work.

The Enlarged 12th Plenary Session of the Eighth Central
Committee calls on all workers, poor and lower-middle peasants, commanders and fighters of the
People’s Liberation Army, revolutionary cadres, revolutionary Red Guards and revolutionary
intellectuals and on the revolutionary people of all nationalities in the country to carry out
resolutely Chairman Mao’s teaching that the working class must exercise leadership in
everything, to establish the dictatorship of the proletariat in the superstructure,
including all spheres of culture, to fulfil the tasks in all stages of
struggle-criticism-transformation put forward by Chairman Mao and to carry the great
proletarian cultural revolution through to the end!

We must continue to carry out Chairman Mao’s great principle
on the revolutionary great alliance and the revolutionary three-in-one combination and
conscientiously implement Chairman Mao’s instructions on conducting revolutionary mass
criticism and repudiation, on simplifying the administrative structure, on cadres’ going down
to do manual labour and on changing irrational rules and regulations, so that our new-born
revolutionary committees can forge close links with the masses, be constantly consolidated,
developed and improved and perform the functions of the dictatorship of the proletariat still
better.

We must continue fully to arouse the masses, conscientiously
to carry out the work of purifying the class ranks in factories, people’s communes, Party and
government institutions, schools, all enterprises and undertakings and neighbourhoods, etc.,
and to dig out the handful of counter-revolutionaries hiding among the masses.

We must carry out Chairman Mao’s directive that the Party
organization should be composed of the advanced elements of the proletariat; it should be a
vigorous vanguard organization capable of leading the proletariat and the revolutionary masses
in the fight against the class enemy, carry out Chairman Mao’s instruction on “getting
rid of the stale and taking in the fresh,” conscientiously do the work of Party
consolidation and Party building, expel from the Party proved renegades, enemy agents, diehard
capitalist loaders, degenerate elements and other alien class elements who have sneaked into
the Party, take into the Party fresh blood from the proletariat — above all, advanced elements
with communist consciousness from among industrial workers — and select outstanding Party
members who are resolute in carrying out Chairman Mao’s proletarian revolutionary line for
leading posts in the Party.

We must fulfil the great historic mission of the proletarian
revolution in education. As regards intellectuals, they must be re-educated by the workers,
peasants and soldiers so that they can integrate themselves with the workers and peasants. The
workers’ propaganda teams should stay permanently in the schools and colleges, take part in all
the tasks of struggle-criticism-transformation there and always lead these institutions. In the
countryside, schools and colleges should be managed by the poor and lower-middle peasants — the
most reliable ally of the working class. This is a question of key importance in carrying
the great proletarian cultural revolution through to the end. The workers, the poor and
lower-middle peasants and the commanders and fighters of the People’s Liberation Army who are
undertaking this glorious task should constantly raise their political consciousness in the
course of struggle.

We must grasp revolution and promote production and other
work and preparedness against war, and do a still better job in building socialist industry,
socialist agriculture and all other socialist undertakings in our country. The great proletarian
cullural revolution is a tremendous motive force for the development of socialist production in
our country. It is promoting the emergence of a new leap in our socialist construction and will
continue to do so.

We must continuously strengthen the great Chinese People’s
Liberation Army, further consolidate national defence, and continue to do a good job in
supporting the army and cherishing the people. We are determined to liberate Taiwan. We
must heighten our vigilance a hundredfold against the rapacious U.S. imperialists and the Soviet
modern revisionist renegade clique. Should the enemy dare to impose war on us, we will wipe
him out resolutely, thoroughly, wholly and completely.

The Plenary Session holds that, as Comrade Mao Tse-tung has
pointed out, the world revolution has entered a great new era. The revolutionary movement
of the people in all countries is developing vigorously.

Riddled with contradictions and beset with difficulties both
at home and abroad, the imperialists headed by the United States and the modern revisionists
headed by the Soviet revisionist renegade clique are disintegrating, they are at the end of
their tether and are becoming more isolated than ever.

While both colluding and struggling with each other, the U.S.
imperialists and the Soviet revisionists are trying in vain to redivide the world. In their war
of aggression against Vietnam, the U.S. imperialists enjoy the tacit consent and support of the
Soviet revisionists, while in turn the Soviet revisionist renegade clique enjoys the tacit
consent and support of the U.S. imperialists in openly dispatching troops to occupy
Czechoslovakia. Their dirty political deal has been thoroughly exposed before the people of the
world. Their nakedly aggressive actions have deepened the internal contradictions within the
imperialist and the revisionist blocs and helped promote the political consciousness of the
oppressed masses in the U.S. imperialist and Soviet revisionist homelands and, at the same time,
they are stirring up a great new upsurge in the struggle of the proletariat and the people
throughout the world against U.S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism. No matter how tortuous
the course of the struggle, no matter what rubbish the U.S. imperialists and Soviet revisionists
have collected to organize an anti-China and counter-revolutionary “holy alliance,” they are
inevitably “lifting a rock only to drop it on their own feet.” We are not in the least
isolated, for the people who want revolution, comprising over 90 per cent of the world’s
population, are our friends. The wheel of history can assuredly never be turned back,
imperialism, revisionism and all other reactionary forces are bound to be smashed by the
revolutionary people, and all the oppressed people and oppressed nations of the world will
definitely achieve complete emancipation through their struggle!

The Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people under the
leadership of Comrade Mao Tse-tung uphold proletarian internationalist principles and policies,
unite with the genuine Marxist-Leninists of all countries, firmly support the heroic Albanian
people’s struggle against imperialism and revisionism, firmly support the heroic Vietnamese
people in carrying their war of resistance against U.S. aggression and for national salvation
through to the end, and firmly support all the just struggles of the peoples of the world
against imperialism, revisionism and all other reaction. The Communist Party of China holds
that all peoples oppressed by U.S. imperialism, Soviet revisionism and their lackeys should
form a broad united front to smash the plots hatched by U.S. imperialism and Soviet revisionism
in their vain attempt to dominate the world, so as to win victory and liberation more
quickly.

The Plenary Session was convened in an excellent domestic
and international situation. This was a session of mobilization for the seizure of all-round
victory in the great proletarian cultural revolution, a session of unprecedented unity in the
whole Party under the leadership of the proletarian headquarters with Chairman Mao as its
leader and Vice-Chairman Lin as its deputy leader, a session full of proletarian revolutionary
vitality. The Plenary Session is convinced that the comrades of the whole Party, the people of
the whole country and the revolutionary peoples of the whole world will all rejoice over the
success of our session and that those who fear this session are but the handful of imperialists
headed by U.S. imperialism, modern revisionists headed by the Soviet revisionist renegade
clique, and other reactionaries at home and abroad.

Let us closely follow our great leader’ Chairman Mao and
courageously march forward! Victory will be ours.